


Chosen Summer

by maat_seshat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-24
Updated: 2009-08-24
Packaged: 2019-09-20 08:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17019336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/pseuds/maat_seshat
Summary: When Kendra chose to protect Buffy's town, she did not choose to take on her life. It takes time for anyone in Sunnydale to realize that.





	Chosen Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Written for genarti, for genficathon.
> 
> Set the summer between Seasons 2 & 3.

The graveyards of Sunnydale did not change, even when the one who patrolled them did. Kendra waited beside a mound of freshly turned earth. The vampire would rise from it soon enough.

The voices of her companions rang loudly in the stillness. "Do you think Buffy'll be back soon? I mean, school's starting in a week." Willow was clearly trying to speak softly.

Xander made no such effort. "She got kicked out, Will. Not really thinking school's on her mind much."

"I know. I just—" Kendra remembered the helpless little gesture that she had seen accompany those words countless times before she had stopped watching.

Their feet shuffled in the grass behind her, blending almost smoothly into the rustle of the dirt before her as the vampire finally crawled to the surface. Then it growled, and the illusion of nature was broken. Kendra moved forward, sidestepped the vampire’s clawing fingers, and slammed her stake into its back. She angled it to avoid the ribcage, but she still felt the scrape of bone against her stake, stealing some of her momentum before wood reached heart and the body exploded into dust. Careless.

"Well," Xander clapped, "nice and quick. Looking like we even have time for a movie night."

Kendra dusted the stake off. It was not Mr. Pointy, who lay still beside her bed, a reminder of Buffy's mute apology and plea, left before Kendra ever regained consciousness. This stake was unnamed, but it served well.

"Yeah!" Willow's voice was bright and loud, only a little changed from her murmur. "I have a brand new copy of _Sense and Sensibility_ , and we're even going to be reading the book this year. Ms. Danvers told me."

Xander groaned and looked ready to speak when Kendra turned to face them. "I will continue the patrol," she said evenly, feeling the words rasp in her throat, and resisted brushing her hand across the faint scar that was all that remained to show her failure in her battle with the witch-vampire.

Willow wilted. "Oh. Um, maybe you can come by when you're done?" The spiky-haired boy beside her—Oz, Kendra reminded herself; she should know these names, since they did not seem likely to leave soon—wrapped an arm around her.

"Perhaps." She would not. "I will consult with the Watcher when I am finished." The trio began to leave.

"Buffy should watch it, too," Willow told her companions as they walked away. "It'll make class easier, in case she doesn't have time to read the book, what with, well, everything."

"I still don't get why you and Buffy watched movies like that." One could hear Xander's grimace in his words.

"Xander!" Willow scolded, her voice trailing off into the night. "Past tense rule!"

Kendra began to run in the opposite direction, and she heard nothing more through the whisper of blood in her ears as her body moved. As the Slayer's body did what she demanded of it.

***

Kendra danced. The sword whispered through the air around her, a blur of silver waterwheels and dragonfly reverses, simultaneously a lengthening of her right arm and her partner. She felt the satisfying stretch throughout her body as she swung low, a feint that transformed into a swooping rise to block an attack on her vulnerable neck and slid without pausing into a jab at her opponent's side. She breathed, even and centered. The movements must always be graceful and deadly, neither a bludgeoning attack of mindless strength, nor a ballet so enwrapped in its own beauty that it forgot its opponent. She drew her movements tighter as she turned to attack her flanks, compensating for the narrow confines of the library’s entrance, a challenge to remind her that she fought always in this world. At the corner of her eye, the door to the library shivered.

It swung open, and Willow entered. With one further sweep of the sword, Kendra brought the form to a close that made Willow startle. "Oh! I—I was just looking for Giles..."

Kendra held the sword loosely, pointed downwards, and gestured with her head. "Mr. Giles is in the office."

"Oh! Um, thanks." Willow walked past her, so close to the counter that Kendra could hear her clothing scraping against it. She disappeared into the office. Kendra began another form, one slow, elegant, and silent.

"...find anything?"

Mr. Giles mumbled in response. "...appears...false alarm."

Kendra caught movement out of the corner of her eye, as Willow moved to perch on the desk and brought her hands up to her face. "...can't believe...not _Buffy_ out there!" Her voice rose at the end of her sentence.

Mr. Giles's voice rose in response, angry, emotional. "Kendra stayed here to protect the denizens of this town. We owe her gratitude. There is something to be said for duty."

"Well, maybe she felt like she could leave because Kendra is here," Willow protested, clear and unheeding of her surroundings. "She's not the only Slayer anymore, and the last few months have been awful for her, so what's wrong with her letting someone else handle the Hellmouth for a little while?" The words shivered in the air, almost tangible, except that the sword did not cut them.

Mr. Giles did not answer, or if he did, it was too low to escape the office. Kendra swept into the form's sequel, fast to oppose the slow of the first, and imagined her Watcher opposite her, the light ring of metal meeting and whirling apart. He would be too slow, and only moderately skilled, because none of the bladed disciplines had been his focus until they caught her childish fancy. The blades would sing with joy, as she matched his skill, striving not to defeat him, but to push him, to judge his ability and hold her own under control as tight as that which created the water-steel swords. Blades were an indulgence, anyway, when so many demons were nearly immune to them.

Only when Willow pushed open the door to the office did Kendra break her stride, to glide to the opposite side of the table and let the girl pass. Willow walked towards the exit without glancing up. On the edge of the doorway, hand resting lightly on the metal rectangle, she looked back. "That was beautiful," she said, nearly soundless, compliment and apology unexpected.

Kendra inclined her head in response. "Thank you."

***

This time, Kendra was sitting out in the bright sunlight, bent over a book, when she heard Willow’s footsteps rustling in the grass. The sound was distinctive, a wide stride that crunched into the ground as one leg came up, whispered across the grass tips, and crunched into the ground again as the foot came back down. "I did not know that you came to this park," Kendra said and did not take her eyes from her book.

"I...don't?" Willow replied. "I mean, I never even really thought about its being here until I saw you, you know, walking over here every day." Her fingers drummed once against the wood of the bench as she gripped it and leaned over Kendra's shoulder. "What're you reading?" She gasped. "Oh, wow! Who is she?"

"This," Kendra traced her fingers lightly over the print, finger a centimeter from the page, to avoid damaging it, "is an imagining of Tomoe Gozen, warrior of ancient Japan."

"Was she a Slayer?"

Kendra half-shrugged and still did not turn her eyes from the book. "Perhaps. Some say no woman would have become a senior captain in battle without a Slayer's power. Others say that no Slayer would have so publically embraced one side of a war. I...do not believe she was."

"Why are you reading about her, then?" Only the honest curiosity in that high voice stopped Kendra from refusing to answer.

"It is a history my Watcher sent me, of the supposed origins of the sword." She removed her hands from the book before they could tighten and crumple the delicate pages. "I wish to know the stories of my weapons."

"So he makes you study them? The way we study, you know, prophecies and stuff?" Kendra breathed and ignored her anger at the assumption. It was not a useful anger.

"Why?" Her voice was a little sharper than she normally permitted it to become, but after nearly three months in Sunnydale, she wondered if displaying pointless emotion was the only way to become real to these people. "It is not a useful knowledge. My Watcher did not study it until I expressed my interest."

"Oh." The word was more a puff of air than a sound. "But he lets you do it? He helps you do it?"

Kendra finally smiled. "It is...eccentric. But permitted. We have become the Council's experts in the weapons of former Slayers."

"Oh!" Kendra felt the movement of the air as Willow removed her hands from the bench to gesture excitedly. "Is that how you knew about that sword that you brought for—" The abrupt cessation of movement was as clear as a shout, and Kendra felt her own smile disappear.

"That was not a Slayer's sword," she said precisely. "It was a purchase for another Council member that Mr. Zabuto intended to send to England until we received the signs that sent it—and me—here."

Willow finally crossed around the bench to sit down, looking slightly guilty. She did not pursue the topic, but returned instead to the earlier one. "But I thought you said, um, Tomoe wasn't a Slayer. I mean, so this new sword wouldn't be a Slayer's sword either."

Kendra tapped the edges of the book, silently accepting the subject change, and turned to flip the pages again. "But a Slayer did bear it. In truth, the only reason we believe this was Tomoe's spare sword is because she did. Her Watcher seems to have been of a family of story-tellers."

"Oh. What's her name?" Willow leaned forward, eyes sparkling, and Kendra felt herself drawn in.

"We call her Tamesuke's Tomoe. Her Watcher was Fujiwara Tamesuke, and he never wrote down her name, only 'my Tomoe'. We do not know her origins."

"She doesn't get a _name_?" Willow exclaimed, looking horrified.

Kendra shook her head. "But she was wonderful. It is sad, I think, that the world does not have stories of her, outside of the Chronicles." She broke off, staring at the book. After a silent minute, Willow bounced impatiently.

"Well? You can't leave it there! Tell me some of them."

Kendra looked down at the book, and found a line. Willow waited beside her, and Kendra could feel the other girl's gaze on her face. She translated from the French as she read, _"As a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot..."_

**Author's Note:**

> Fun extras:
> 
> [Woodblock print of Tomoe](https://honolulumuseum.org/art/10238-tomoe-gozena_z), by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of my favorite woodblock artists, who specialized in warrior images.
> 
> The [passage from the Heike Monogatari](https://books.google.com/books?id=qtjiNeRJXmsC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=%22heike+monogatari%22+sword&source=bl&ots=5aXw_DThWf&sig=X6uN0KgQd5aWPkL802_b5WpOUig&hl=en&ei=-aeASov1HKCEtgeOp5TcAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=%22heike%20monogatari%22%20sword&f=false) from which I stole the waterwheels and dragonflies of Kendra's form. At the bottom of the page.
> 
> The [full quote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoe_Gozen), actually about the real Tomoe Gozen, that I use at the end.


End file.
